Anybody sell an MP3 player with built-in speaker? (1 Viewer)

[Jay H]

Thought I'd use one on my bike as I commute to work.... right now I have a little AM/FM radio but it gets bad reception. the MP3 player would be ideal so I could copy some of my CD's onto MP3 format and burn them onto some kind of memory stick and away I go...

Needs to have a builtin speaker though, and not just headphone jacks..
Jay

 

[Philip_G]

out of curiousity why do you need a built in speaker?

 

[Jay H]

Because I don't want to use earphones when I'm biking. There is a short road section I have to bike on that is well trafficked so it's nice to be able to hear the cagers coming up on you. I do use a little mirror attached to my sunglasses. Otherwise, I would be able to use earphones. There's also the possibility of the wire getting caught on branches and stuff while I'm off-road. A small chance but a chance nonetheless.

I do know of some people who actually have rigged up small PC speakers from a headphone jack but I thought to see if there's a better way.

Jay

 

[Philip_G]

I see. When motorcycling I wear earplugs pretty frequently and have no problems hearing, but I'm moving with traffic so cars come up a lot slower, I imagine that makes a difference, also it cuts the wind noise more than other traffic I feel, never tried headphones, with my luck I'd have an unscheduled get off and the phones would get wrapped around something.
You could always just use one earphone, or attach the phones inside your lid if you wear one, the wire can always be tucked away. Maybe that way they would be easier to hear over.
PC speaker is a good idea but I'm not sure it would get very loud at all unless you got one that was battery powered

 

[Jay H]

Most of my commute is off-road so I don't have to deal with noisy cars going by, it is hard to hear the radio when the cars are zipping by but the little Sony radio that was like $8 is fine when I'm on the trails. I have it bungee corded to my rear rack. It runs on 2 AA batteries.

A friend of my sisters used to know somebody who actually rigged up two speakers on the handlebars but that is something that would be overboard and not sure if it would stand up to the rigors of the trail. The one earphone idea sounds interested, but like you said, I'd probably wind up strangling myself if I ever crashed!

I was looking at one of those shower radios but then I found the little sony. The shower radios have the added benefit of being somewhat water resistant, however most of them are fairly bulky in size.

Jay

 

[Ken Garrison]

Why would you want one with just one speaker? You might be able to mount a pair of weather proof speakers to the handle bars. You don't want something with a piece of shit speaker that has no bass and barely any treble.

 

[Jay H]

I don't think a pair of speakers attached to the handlebars is my cup of tea, it's cumbersome and would interfere with the dual-bean lights I use for commuting in the winter as it gets dark early and sunrise is late. And then I also have a GPS mount on the bike when I go bike touring. Plus, I mentioned that I couldn't care less about the fidelity, I have to deal with cars and wind noise so usually I have to turn up the volume alot and any little speaker is going to be driven to almost clipping volumes and I'm not interested in the DD5.1 bike setup, although that sounds like a goofball "Junkyard Wars" theme. "Alright teams, your goal today is to build the most awesome, home theater, complete with DD5.1, on a bicycle...Now get to work!"
I'm getting sick of listening to AM/FM on my $10 radio because all the stinkin stations in the morning talk... I can get maybe one or two songs in like my 50 minute commute... ugh.
Jay